2017, 2021.

#5yrsago How to legally cross a US (or other) border without surrendering your data and passwords https://www.wired.com/2017/02/guide-getting-past-customs-digital-privacy-intact/

#5yrsago Yale’s college will no longer bear the name of a slaver, from now on, it’s “Grace Murray Hopper” college https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/11/yale-change-calhoun-college-s-name-honor-grace-murray-hopper-0

#5yrsago Parliament ponders letting US immigration strip-search Canadians in Canadian…

Any time a government starts to make noises about regulating Amazon Marketplace to end its predatory and negligent management towards third-party sellers, the company trots out all kinds of apologists who claim that “Amazon is great for small businesses.”

But the daily reality for users of Amazon’s platform is very…

William Gibson and Eileen Gunn have been pals since the early days; it was Gunn — then a Microsoft exec — who hosted Gisbon — then a penniless writer — in Seattle and brought him to the hacker bars where he eavesdropped on what he calls “the poetics of the…

Like a lot of leftists, I’ve been profoundly disappointed and demoralized by the Biden administration’s unwillingness or incapacity to play hardball and get the “Biden Agenda” through Congress. But there is a ray of hope: some of Biden’s agency picks are astoundingly great and doing amazing work.

Take Gary Gensler…

Today in Wired, Gregory Barber profiles my friend, colleague and collaborator Ada Palmer, an extraordinary writer, librettist, historian, scholar, activist and performer:

https://www.wired.com/story/ada-palmer-sci-fi-future-weird-hand-progress/

Palmer has just wrapped up Terra Ignota, her four-volume series depicting a deeply weird and uncomfortable future that is informed by her world-class scholarship into Renaissance history…

#10yrsago Patent troll that claimed ownership over the Web loses its case https://www.wired.com/2012/02/interactive-web-patent/

#10yrsago Alan Moore explains the Guy Fawkes mask, Occupy, Anonymous and anti-ACTA protests https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16968689

#5yrsago Ukrainian MPs caught illegally casting multiple votes in Parliament. Again. https://globalvoices.org/2017/02/10/ukrainian-anti-corruption-watchdog-catches-mps-casting-multiple-votes-again/

#5yrsago A succinct, simple, excellent description of the problems of neoliberalism…

It’s a new day in America. After 40 years in a coma, antitrust law is rising again. The DoJ and FTC are both seeking advice on how to conduct “merger review” — that is, deciding whether to allow companies to grow by buying each other.

This is a dangerous practice…

Early in the 19th century, political philosophers like Jeremy Bentham began to rail against champerty, whereby “unscrupulous nobles and royal officials would lend their names to bolster the credibility of doubtful and fraudulent claims in return for a share of the property recovered.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#History

On its face, the practice of…